HVAC Audit and Analysis

Chiller plants are an essential part of buildings and consume a significant amount of energy.

This course focuses on the fundamental operations of HVAC components (comprising chilled water and air handling systems), measurement, data acquisition, and analytics to determine the specific energy consumption (SEC) of the chilled water and air handling systems.

During the course, participants will be tasked to measure and analyse at least 2 weeks of HVAC components raw data, propose potential energy-saving opportunities, and design improvement concepts through the group presentation. Assessment will be in the form of MCQ and group presentation.

Who Should Attend

• Energy engineers/managers

• Facilities engineers/managers

• Engineers/managers who are required to understand piping networks in the following industries:

  • Process industries such as chemicals & energy, pharmaceutical engineering and food manufacturing

  • Air-conditioning supply

  • Transport engineering (marine & offshore) subsector

Prerequisites

• Bachelor degree in engineering or engineering diploma with 2 years of relevant working experience

What You Will Learn

Chilled water system

• Introduction to HVAC system

• Compression cycle and compression chiller systems

• Absorption cycle and absorption chiller systems

• Water Side circulation system

• Analysing the performance of a chiller plant and chiller sequencing

• Fundamental of chiller plants and its associated components

• Fundamental of cooling towers and its operation

• Heat recovery systems

Airside system

• Air properties for air conditioning

• Performance calculation of HVAC system (air side)

• Introduction to fans/blower for air distribution

• Concept of air side performance

• Duct/pipe system and concept

• Fan selection and pressure drop: Major loss, minor loss, relationship between volume flow rates, pressure drop and power

• Critical parameters for air side performance

• Fundamental of cooling towers and its operation

• Cooling tower performance and operations

            
Data acquisition methodology on HVAC parameters for analysis

• Key parameters on HVAC facilities that affect energy performance

• Efficiency index for different facilities and their best practice efficiencies

• Type of measuring tools

• Safety requirement on power measurement and other measurements

• AHU airflow/face velocity/on/off coil temp using psychrometric chart and software

• Cooling measurement methods on chilled water system + heat balance

• Water pipe system curve generation

• Tutorial on identification of measuring location and type of tools needed

Financial analysis of operating HVAC system

• Financial analysis introduction

• Simple payback calculation

• Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR)

• Excel exercise on financial calculation

• Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA)

• Tutorial on financial analysis

• Case study introduction and objective

Raw data generation + data analysis

• Super-imposed plot generation: Power, flowrate, temp, pressure, tonnage, efficiency            

• Histogram generation: Power, temp, tonnage, efficiency             

• Scatter diagram for correlation observation: Tonnage vs efficiency, flowrate vs pressure, flowrate per cooling capacity vs delta temp

• Solution proposal with financial calculation (case study)